


Asmanjas

by CarminaVulcana



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Karma - Freeform, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:03:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21096902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarminaVulcana/pseuds/CarminaVulcana
Summary: What if Bhadra was the son of Bhallaladeva and Devasena in canon!verse?This prompt was sent my way by Shubhra. Here is my response.





	Asmanjas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts), [thelonewolfwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelonewolfwrites/gifts), [Inkn1ght1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkn1ght1/gifts), [arpita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arpita/gifts).

Personification had once been a tool of poetry in her imagination. Poets and bards spoke of the elements as their paramours. They valued the unspoken opinion of the eyes and drank in the sweetness of sleeping lips. But now, she understood better. There was a reason to rage against the elements too—they were unforgiving on purpose. They slashed at her out of spite, as if mocking her pain and jeering at her like the echoes of Bhallaladeva’s polluted words.

It was the 150th day of her captivity. She didn’t know if or when she would regain her freedom. Her child had promised her that he would return for her—but it would be a long time before that happy reunion. For now, she had to comfort herself with imagined memories of him. He would have started crawling now. Perhaps he would be drinking goat’s milk instead of nursing at some stranger’s teat.

The smell of milk from her own breasts reminded her of their aching fullness yet again. Her flesh strained against the constricting fabric of the blouse and stained the cloth, as rock-hard nipples pressed uncomfortably against it.

The earth under her—slurried by the rain—didn’t help matters. She was cold, wet, and miserable. The day wore on slowly. She had no books to wile away the hours, no song to keep her company, and no one to talk to. Only memories and grief… and the inextinguishable fire for revenge.

150 days. 5 months. Less than a percent of her doomed eternity that would inevitably be measured in years.

At night, she rested her head on the hard earth to sleep. Unbidden, images from the hours gone by came back to her.

_She stood shivering as droplets of water dripped down from the edge of her saari and her tangled hair. Her teeth chattered and she seemed to shrink within herself to preserve what little body heat she could. The cold chains on her feet added to the chill and the urge to sink to the floor due to exhaustion warred with her desire to stay upright. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fall. _

_“So, Crown Princess of Kunthala,” Bhallaldeva circled her slowly. “That wet saari looks rather uncomfortable. Perhaps, you could use a change of clothes.”_

_Devasena didn’t respond. Her eyes remained on the floor. _

_“But for that, you need to step out of that filthy rag… I hear these cold, winter nights are best spent with a warm body next to yours. Like his… or perhaps mine… since I took care of him for us.”_

_With that, he came close to her and placed his hand on her shoulder. She tensed. _

_“Oh, I hear your panic,” he sneered. “And is that your heartbeat?” He placed his head right under her left breast; too close for comfort._

_She closed her eyes and willed the tears to remain hidden under her eyelids. There would be time to weep later. There would be time to weep later. For now, she had to be a stone, a corpse, anything but the living embodiment of this mad man’s momentary victory._

_“Strip,” He barked. _

_She flinched but stayed rooted to her spot. _

_“Start with that blouse of yours, won’t you,” He chuckled. ‘I bet you are hiding a national treasure under those tatters. “Go on. Or should I call for your old attendants? Or… wait… maybe I should call for** my **attendants. After all, you are public property now.”_

_She longed to hit him, to shout and scream, but she held her silence and tensed her body to face whatever he would do to her. _

_He stood in front of her and lowered his face to hers. She could smell the faint odor of pepper and garlic on his breath. She held her breath to avoid the foul smell of his mouth as he fumbled with the waistband of his dhoti. _

_“Look what I have for you,” his manhood, an impressive size even in its flaccid state, hung nestled between a tangle of dark, coarse hair. _

_“I can control my reactions, did you know,” he smirked. “It would be too easy to throw you down on that floor and take you like the little bitch you are. But hey, bitches beg for release. Come on, beloved Baahu has been dead for 5 months. Don’t you need a cock inside that tight, wet pussy after all this time? I am a generous man. I will even make it good for you.” He licked his lips, almost touching hers. She jerked away. He laughed. “Ah! I see. You want to keep up the faithful wife act. Perhaps, if I forced you and you pretended to resist; maybe then you would be able to enjoy yourself guiltfree.” _

_“You are a sick son of a bitch,” Devasena could not control herself any longer. _

_“Maybe. I am a son of a bitch, alright. But what are you, hag? Not even the cheapest whorehouse in Singhapuram will have you. Accept what I offer you. And you will have a bed, a meal, perhaps even dry clothes… unless I decide you look better without them.” _

_“I will never give in to you,” she snarled. “Never.”_

_“Very well, whore. You leave me no choice.”_

_Bhallaladeva pushed her against a wall and hiked up her saari to her knees but she clenched her thighs close. _

_“I will break you legs,” he ground out. “Open those legs.”_

_“I will not. Break whatever you want. I’d rather be broken than bedded by a beast like you.”_

_That drove Bhalladeva over the edge. He gripped his organ and pumped furiously to get it ready, all the while whispering the horrible, vile things he would do to her. _

_But even several minutes into his masturbation, he remained limp. _

_It was Devasena’s turn to laugh. _

_“So, you have a problem, I see,” she grinned. “I may be a hag, but you are no man. Heck, you aren’t even a eunuch. At least they have the favor of the Gods. What do you have? A dead piece of flesh that can’t even pleasure you in baser ways?” _

_A throaty laughter burst out from her chapped lips. _

_Enraged, he backhanded her hard enough to split the side of her mouth. But she didn’t stop laughing. _

_Ultimately, he had her dragged back to her cage. _

Devasena didn’t know what to make of this information. On the one hand, she was repulsed and horrified by how closely she’d escaped being raped. On the other, she wondered if Bhallaladeva’s hatred for her husband was indeed rooted in his own sexual insecurities.

There were no answers. Besides, she didn’t care for them either. She could only be grateful that she had been spared the terrifying fate of so many imprisoned and fallen queens from history.

Just as she closed her eyes to try and sleep, the sound of footsteps and the soft wails of a baby filled her ears.

She sat up and peered over the edge of her cage.

Madan Kumara, one of the night guards, sat in a corner with a small infant in his arms. The baby’s incessant crying made something bleed insider her soul.

“Sleep, little one,” the guard cooed tiredly at the baby. “There is no milk. In the morning, we will find you a wet nurse.”

He tried to rock the baby in his arms and hummed an off-key lullaby in the hopes of putting the child to sleep.

“… Clouds are asleep. Moon is asleep. The stars are asleep. And asleep is little bobah… wolves are asleep. Deer are asleep. Fish are asleep. And asleep is little bobah…”

Devasena smiled at the words of the lullaby. She had never heard it before. She wondered if it was a local Mahishmati folk song. Maybe someone sang it to Mahendra every night.

The guard continued to sing, oblivious to the prisoner’s attention. But his efforts yielded no fruits. The baby only yelled louder.

“Oye, Madana,” a guard from the upper floors called out. “That noise will wake everyone up. Can’t you leave the child with your sister-in-law?”

“I wish I could, Surya,” he responded. “But she has three little ones of her own. It isn’t my fault that my wife passed on just after giving birth to him.”

“Whatever. Shut him up!”

Madan Kumara hung his head low and took a walk around the courtyard while bouncing the little bundle in his arms.

But even that did not work. The child’s wails only grew in decibels.

Devasena could not bear it anymore.

“Please, Madan Kumara,” she exclaimed. “This bouncing and singing won’t help. Your child is hungry.”

The guard stopped in his tracks and turned around.

“Did you not hear what I just said,” there was a hard edge to his voice. “My boy is unlucky. He can’t have milk from a dead mother’s breasts. And the midwife has said no to goat’s milk.”

Heat flooded Devasena’s cheeks as she made her suggestion; she was surprised at her own boldness.

“I… I… am also a… a lactating mother,” she stammered out. “Perhaps, I can feed… you know, maybe I could… feed the baby.”

Madan Kumara looked at her with despair etched on his face. He looked like he was about to cry.

“Maharaj will never allow it.”

“He won’t know.”

“Are you… are you certain?”

“I am.”

“Maharani, you are our true queen,” He almost wept as he slipped the baby into her arms through the gap in the bars.

“I don’t know whose queen I am,” she shook her head as she supported the baby’s neck with her right hand and covered the rest of him with the loose end of her saari. “But I am a mother. And a hungry child, is a hungry child.”

For the next hour, the baby fed at Devasena’s bosom. For the first time in five months, she felt the physical relief that came with breastfeeding. For the first time in five months, her grief over losing her husband and child seemed to lessen a little. For the first time in five months, she felt like a human mother, and not some beaten animal.

“Does he have a name?” she asked Madan Kumara. The baby napped in her lap peacefully; satiated after finally receiving the only kind of nutrition a newborn needed.

“Not yet,” the guard answered. “But my wife wanted to name him after her grandfather, Karmaveera.”

“Then perhaps you can call him Karmaraja.”

The guard nodded at the fallen queen’s suggestion. “My wife will be pleased up there. Thank you for your kindness, milady.”

Devasena did not say anything. She continued to rock the child in her lap and hummed a song from her lost country. As the sun’s first rays appeared on the horizon, she handed the child back to his father.

While Devasena spent a night of comfort in the unadulterated love of motherhood, Bhallaladeva stared into the mirror and cursed himself for being such a wretch.

He had never intended to actually force himself on Devasena. But oh, he had hoped to scare her, to terrify her into believing that he was the master of her fate, and that only his will could keep her safe from that final humiliation that every woman dreaded even more than death.

But his body had betrayed him. Desire had betrayed him. Nothing had stirred in his loins even at the thought of mauling her glorious, milk-swollen breasts.

And just like that, his plan had backfired and handed her a small but significant victory on a platter. She knew he couldn’t have her. Despite wanting her, his body couldn’t respond to her.

_“…. Because it responded only to Him,”_ a snide little voice whispered in his head.

The next morning, he sent a message to the king of Saurashtra and cancelled his betrothal to Princess Vallabhi. He was not ready for marriage. No other woman would know his dark, shameful secret. It was bad enough that Devasena had found out.

He did not visit her cage that morning. Nor did he go in the afternoon. But just as the lamps were dimmed for bedtime, the overwhelming need to see her struck him. Unfortunately for Madan Kumara and Devasena, Bhallaladeva couldn’t have picked a worse moment.

She was refastening the ties on her blouse when he came to see her

Their eyes met. But instead of contempt and cruel amusement, he saw contentment in her gaze. Something had changed for her.

Just then, he noticed the babe in her arms.

“Whose child is that?" he growled. "And why was your blouse open? Have you been getting it on with the guards, you dirty little whore?"

“Everyone isn’t like you,” she answered truthfully. “The child belongs to a guard. His wife passed on and the baby was hungry.”

“Oh, so you still have some use left in you.”

“I always will. Someone’s unlikely mother. Someone’s unattainable fantasy. Someone’s unholy nemesis.”

“Take the child away,” the king ordered Katappa. “Perhaps this little bitch hasn't learned her lessons yet. Oh, the things I must do to keep her in line.”

“Tch Tch, Devasena,” he turned to her again. “What did I say? You can’t have anything here. Looks like I will have to send this babe to the same place I sent your dear departed husband. The question is, how would you like me to do it? Perhaps I can burn it alive on that pyre you are preparing for me. Or perhaps we can be kinder and apply poison to your tits?”

Devasena gasped but she wasn't surprised. She struggled to keep her composure. “Better he be dead than be touched by your poison and the hell you have turned this country into. But even you wouldn't stoop so low, would you?" 

"Watch me," there was an exaggerated relish in his voice. 

But before Bhallaladeva could say anything more, Madan Kumara rushed and fell at his feet. “Please my king, spare the babe,” he wept. “The child is blameless. Please punish me. I requested the prisoner to take pity on my child. Please don’t kill my son.”

Bhallaladeva kicked the man away. “You cannot be allowed to live.”

With a swift stroke of his sword, he beheaded the hapless guard and turned the mewling child in Katappa’s arms into an orphan.

A lone tear made its way down Devasena’s cheek. She wished she could cry more. But her well of sorrow had run dry long ago. There was little left to spare for anyone else.

“This babe has tied us together, Devasena,” Bhallaladeva took the child in his arms. “My son. You fed him milk from your breasts. At last, one of mine has taken something that rightfully belonged to one of His. These are the fates telling you to see the winds of change, o mighty princess of Kunthala.”

He flashed her a triumphant grin. “Your milk will sustain the poison I carry for Baahubali in my heart. My son will ascend the throne. And yours will remain dead as dirt."

Bhallaladeva raised the child as Bhadradeva—a younger, crueler version of his own power-hungry self. But in Devasena’s heart, there was no hatred for Karmaraja, the child who had taken his first nourishment at her breast. The old wise women of Kunthala had believed that children nursed by the same woman were brothers unto each other despite not sharing each other’s blood. If that was indeed the case—and she liked to believe it was—it was only natural that she wished Bhadra well, that she wanted redemption for him, and that in some sense, she was his mother just as Mahendra would have been his brother.

But at the end of the day, Mahendra hadn’t nursed at her breast after his birth. Bhallaladeva had seen to that.

Perhaps that’s why, Mahendra killed Bhadra in an instant with no remorse, while once again, a single tear slipped from her eye in farewell—except, this time, the mercy of rain hid her pain and washed away the last of her fleeting bond with him.


End file.
